Three also marks the first time that Plaskett has recorded with his father, Bill, a, longtime musician himself. Plaskett senior, whose musical tastes run to British folk of the '60s, like Bert Jansch and Fairport Convention, used to play guitar and sing semi-professionally in a working band called Starboard Side, who made a recording for the CBC at one point. "I grew up around him playing a lot," says Plaskett the younger. "He invited me to play with him on a number of occasions when I was 14, 15 years old. He'd be playing a folk night somewhere, and I'd get up and play a song with him... Over the past couple of years, there've been opportunities where I've invited him up to play with the band, or do shows together. I just thought, in the back of my mind, that it would be great to document that in some capacity. So he's playing guitar or [four-string] tenor guitar on a lot of the second record of Three." On the first leg of touring to support Three, Plaskett will be presenting a more stripped down acoustic show accompanied by his father Bill, Rose Cousins and Ana Egge. The Emergency will join the fray for the last few shows of the tour (including Massey Hall in Toronto). So after 6 months and dozens of songs recorded it's back to the road and Plaskett's last word. "Three is very much a traveling album," he says. "It's tough, 'cause you want to make music that is universally appealing outside of your world. The [touring] life of a musician, it's not easy, but at the same time, it's not like you're going off to war. There are so many amazing things about it. I think my strongest suit as an artist is writing from personal experience, or at least observation and trying to give my audience a sense of what I care about. This time around I figured I'd roll that all into a giant, somewhat-autobiographical, occasionally-fictional mess of songs."

Ashtray Rock